“Never pray for rain on a rising barometer.”—Naval Regulations.“Married men always make the worst husbands.”—The Critic on the Hearth.“Although, contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he instructed the young prince in his royal duties.”—Anatole France.
“Never pray for rain on a rising barometer.”
—Naval Regulations.
“Married men always make the worst husbands.”
—The Critic on the Hearth.
“Although, contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he instructed the young prince in his royal duties.”
—Anatole France.
Lyn Dyer lived with Uncle Dan in a little crowded house. Across the way stood a big lonesome house; there Edith Harkey lived with Daddy Pete.
Pete Harkey was a gentle, quiet and rather melancholy old man; Dan Fenderson was a fat, jolly and noisy youth of fifty. In relating other circumstances within the knowledge of the Border it would have been in no degree improper to have put the emphasis on the names of those two gentlemen. But this is “another story”; it is fitting that the youngsters take precedence; Lyn Dyer and Uncle Dan, Edith and her father.
Lyn Dyer—Carolyn, Lyn—had known no mother but Aunt Peg. The crowding of the little house was well performed by Lyn’s three young cousins, Danjunior, Tomtom and Peggy.The big house had been lonesome for ten years now. Edith’s sisters and her one brother were all her seniors, all married, and all living within eye flight; two at Hillsboro, a scant twenty-five miles beyond the river—but the big house was not less lonesome for that.
The little crowded house and the big lonesome house were half way between Garfield post office and Derry. Both homes were in Sierra County, but they were barely across the boundary; the county line made the southern limit of each farm. This was no chance but a choosing, and that a pointed one; having to do with that other story of those two old men.
In Dona Ana County taxes were high and life was cheap. Since the Civil War, Dona Ana had been bedeviled by the rule of professional politicians. Sierra—aside from Lake Valley and Hillsboro—had very little ruling and needed less; commonly enough there was only one ticket for county officers, and that was picked by a volunteer committee from both parties. Sierra was an American county, and took pride that she had kept free from feuds and had no bandits within her borders. Notthat Mexicans were such evildoers. But where there was an overwhelming Mexican vote there was a large purchasable vote; which meant that purchasers took office. Unjust administration followed—oppression, lawsuits and lawlessness, revenge, bloodshed, feuds, anarchy. Result: More expense, more taxes, more bribing, more bribers, more oppression to recoup the cost of officeholding.Caveat pre-emptor—let the homesteader beware!
That unhappy time is now past and done with.
“Lyn! Lyn! Edith! Do come here and see what Adam Forbes has brought in,” grumbled Uncle Dan. “Another cowboy, and you just got rid of Tom Bourbonia. It does beat all!”
Mr. Fenderson, uttering the above complaint, stood on his porch in the light from his open door and struck hands with two men there; after which he slapped them violently on the back.
“Come in!” cried Lyn from the doorway. Her eyes were shining. She dropped a curtsy.“‘Come in, come in—ye shall fare most kind!’”
“Don’t you believe Uncle Dan,” said Edith. “We tried every way to make Tommy stay over—didn’t we, Lyn?”
The story is not able to give an exact record of the next minutes. Of the five young people—for Mr. Hobby Lull was there, as prophesied—of the five young people, five were talking at once; and Uncle Dan, above them all, boomed directions to Danjunior as to the horses of his visitors.
“Daniel! Stop that noise!” said Aunt Peg severely. “You boys come on in the house. Mr. Charlie, I’m glad to see you.”
“Now, here!” protested Forbes. “Isn’t anybody going to be glad to see me?”
“But, Adam, we can see you any time,” explained Edith. “While Mr. See—”
“Her eyes went twinkle, twinkle, but her nose went ‘Sniff! Sniff!’” said Adam dolefully. “Excuse me if I seem to interrupt.”
“But Mr. See—”
“Charlie,” said See.
“But Charlie makes himself a stranger.We haven’t seen you for six months, Mr. See.”
“Charlie,” said Mr. See again. “Six months and eight days.”
Mr. Hobby Lull sighed dreamily. “Dear me! It doesn’t seem over two weeks!”
A mesquite fire crackled in the friendly room. The night air bore no chill; it was the meaning of that fire to be cheerful; the wide old fireplace was the heart of the house. Adam Forbes spread his fingers to the blaze and sighed luxuriously.
“Charlie, when you build your house you want a fireplace like this in every room. Hob, who’s going to sell Charlie a farm?”
“What’s the matter with yours?”
Adam appeared a little disconcerted at this suggestion. “That idea hadn’t struck me, exactly,” he confessed. “But it may come to that yet. Lots of things may happen. I might find my placer gold, say. Didn’t know I was fixing to find a gold mine, did you? Well, I am. I wanted Charlie to go snooks with me, but he hasn’t got time. Me, I’ve been projectin’ and pirootin’ over the pinnacles after that gold for a year now, and I’vejust about got it tracked to its lair. To-morrow—”
“Oh, gold!” said Lyn disdainfully, and wrinkled her nose.
“Ain’t I told you a hundred times—Baby!Ain’t I told you a hundred times,There ain’t no money in the placer mines?Baby!”
“Ain’t I told you a hundred times—Baby!Ain’t I told you a hundred times,There ain’t no money in the placer mines?Baby!”
“Lyn! Wherever do you pick up such deplorable songs?” said Aunt Peg, highly scandalized. “But she’s right, Adam. The best gold is like that in the old fable—buried under your apple trees. You dig there faithfully and you will need no placer mines.”
White Edith turned to Charlie See.
“If you really intend to buy a farm here you ought to be getting about it. You might wait too long, Mr. See.”
“Charlie. Exactly what do you mean by that remark, my fair-haired child?”
“Here! This has gone far enough!” declared Hob. “We men have got to stand together—or else pull stakes and go where thewomen cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Don’t you let her threats get you rattled, Charlie See. We’ll protect you.”
“Silly! I meant, of course, that the Mexicans are not selling their lands cheaply now, as they used to do.”
“Not so you could notice it,” said Uncle Dan. “Those that wanted to sell, they’ve sold and gone, just about all of them. What few are left are the solid ones. Not half-bad neighbors either. Pretty good sort. They’re apt to stick.”
“Not long,” said Hobby rather sadly. “They’ll go, and we’ll go too, most of us. The big dam will be built, some time or other; we’ll be offered some real money. We’ll grab it and drift. Strangers will take comfort where we’ve grubbed out stumps. We are the scene shifters. The play will take place later. ’Sall right; I hope the actors get a hand. But I hate to think of strangers living—well, in this old house. Say, we’ve had some happy times here.”
“Won’t you please hush?” said Adam. “Why so doleful? There’s more happy timesin stock. This bunch don’t have to move away. Why, when I get my gold mine in action we can all live happy ever after. To-morrow—”
“Hobby is right,” said Aunt Peg. “Pick your words as you please, bad luck or improvidence on the one side, thrift or greed on the other—yes, and as many more words of praise or blame as you care for; and the fact remains that the people who care for other things more than they do for money are slowly crowded out by the people who care more for money than for anything else.”
“Uncle Dan, is that why you grasping Scotchmen have crowded out the Irish round these parts?” inquired Charlie. “McClintock, MacCleod, Simpson, Forbes, Campbell, Monroe, Fenderson, Stewart, Buchanan—why, say, there’s a raft of you here; and across the river it is worse.”
“You touch there on a very singular thing, Mr. Charlie. Not that we crowded out the Irish. There were only a few families, and most of them are here yet. They happened to come first, and named the settlements—that’sall. But for the Scotch—you find more good Scots’ names to the hundred, once you strike the hills, than you will find to the thousand on the plain country. Love of the hills is in the blood of them; they followed the Rocky Mountains down from Canada.”
“But, Uncle Dan,” said Hobby, “how did so many of them happen to be in Canada?”
“Scotland was a poor country and a cold country, England was rich and warm, Canada was cold and hard. The English had no call to Canada, the Hudson Bay Company captained their outflung posts with Scotchmen; the easier that the Hanoverian kings, as a matter of policy, harried the Jacobite clans by fair means and foul. You were speaking of across the river. That is another curious matter. The California Company, now—ruling a dozen dukedoms—California lends the name of it and supplied the money; but the heads that first dreamed it were four long Scottish heads. And their brand is the John Cross. Any stranger cowman would read that brand as J Half Circle Cross. But we call it John Cross. And why, sirs?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Hobby. “It was always the John Cross and it never entered my head to ask why.”
“Look you there, now!” Uncle Dan held out an open palm and traced on it with a stubby and triumphant finger. “Their fathers had served John Company, the Hudson Bay Company! And there you are linked back with two hundred years! ‘John Company has a long arm,’ they said; ‘John Company lost a good man there!’ How the name began is beyond my sure knowing; but it is in my mind that it goes back farther still, to the East India Company, to Clive and to Madras. Lyn, you are the bookman, I’ll get you to look it up some of these—Lyn! Lyn! Charlie See! The young devils! Now wouldn’t that jar you?”
“A fool and his honey are soon started,” observed Adam.
“We’re out here, Uncle Dan; all nice and comfy. There’s a moon. And itty-bitsy stars,” answered a soothing voice—Charlie See’s—from the porch. “Oodles of stars. How I wonder what they are. G’wan, UncleDan—tell us about the East India Company now.”
Hobby Lull rose tragically and bestowed a withering glance upon Uncle Dan. “You old fat fallacy with an undistributed middle—see what you’ve done now! You and your John Company! Go to bed! Forbes, you brought this man See. You go home!”
“Overlook it this one time,” urged Forbes. “Don’t send us away—the girls are going to sing. Forgive us all both, and I’ll get rid of See to-morrow.”
“Be sure you do, then. Lyn! Come here to me.”
“Don’t shoot, colonel, I’ll come down,” said Lyn.
Her small face was downcast and demure. Charlie See came tiptoe after her and sidled furtively to the fire.
“Sing, then,” commanded Hobby. He brought the guitars and gave one to each girl.
The coals glowed on the hearth; side by side, the fair head and the brown bent at the task of tuning. That laughing circle wasscattered long ago and it was written that never again should all those friendly faces gather by any hearthfire—never again. It has happened so many, many times; even to you and to me, so many, many times! But we learn nothing; we are still bitter, and hard, and unkind—with kindness so cheap and so priceless—as if there was no such thing as loss or change or death.
And because of some hours of your own, it is hoped you will not smile at the songs of that lost happy hour. They were old-fashioned songs; indeed, it is feared they might almost be called Victorian. Their bourgeois simplicity carried no suggestive double meaning.
“When other lips and other hearts”—that was what they sang, brown Lyn and white Edith. Kirkconnel Lea they sang, and Jeanie Morrison, and Rosamond:
Rose o’ the world, what man would wedWhen he might dream of your face instead?
Rose o’ the world, what man would wedWhen he might dream of your face instead?
Folly? Perhaps. Perhaps, too, in a world where we can but love and where we mustlose, it may be no unwisdom if only love and loss seem worth the singing.
The swift hour passed. The last song, even as the first, was poignant with the happy sadness of youth:
When my heart is sad and troubled,Then my quivering lips shall say,“Oh! by and by you will forget me,By and by when far away!”
When my heart is sad and troubled,Then my quivering lips shall say,“Oh! by and by you will forget me,By and by when far away!”
Good-bys were said at last; Forbes and See put foot to stirrup and rode jingling into the white moonlight; the others stood silent on the porch and watched them go. A hundred yards down the road, Adam Forbes drew rein. A guitar throbbed low behind them.
“Hark,” he said.
Edith Harkey stood in the shaft of golden light from the doorway; she bore herself like the Winged Victory; her voice thrilled across the quiet of the moonlit night:
“Never the nightingale,Oh, my dear!Never again the larkThou wilt hear;Though dusk and the morning still“Tap at thy window-sill,Though ever love call and callThou wilt not hear at all,My dear, my dear!”
“Never the nightingale,Oh, my dear!Never again the larkThou wilt hear;Though dusk and the morning still“Tap at thy window-sill,Though ever love call and callThou wilt not hear at all,My dear, my dear!”
The sad notes melted into the sweet pagan heartbreak of the enchanted night. They turned to go.
“A fine girl,” said Adam Forbes. “The only girl! To-morrow—”
He fell silent; again in his heart that parting cadence knelled with keen and intolerable sorrow. The roots of his hair prickled, ants crawled on his spine. So tingles the pulsing blood, perhaps, when a man is fey, when the kisses of his mouth are numbered.
Edith went home to the big lonely house, but Lyn Dyer and Hobby Lull lingered by the low fire. Mr. Lull assumed a dignified pose before the fireplace, feet well apart and his hands clasped behind his back. He regarded Miss Dyer with a twinkling eye.
“Have you anything to say to the court before sentence is pronounced?” he inquired with lofty judicial calm.
Miss Dyer avoided his glance. She stooddrooping before him; she looked to one side at the floor; she looked to the other side at the floor. The toe of her little shoe poked and twisted at a knot in the floor.
“Extenuating circumstances?” she suggested hopefully.
“Name them to the court.”
“The—the moon, I guess.” The inquisitive shoe traced crosses and circles upon the knot in the flooring. “And Charlie See,” she added desperately. “Charlie has such eloquent eyes, Hobby—don’t you think?”
She raised her little curly head for a tentative peep at the court; her own eyes were shining with mischief. The court unclasped its hands.
“I ought to shake you,” declared Hobby. But he did not shake her at all.
“You’re the only young man in Garfield who wears his face clean-shaven,” remarked Lyn reflectively, a little later. “Charlie would look much better without a mustache, I think.”
He pushed her away and tipped up her chin with a gentle hand so that he could lookinto her eyes. “Little brown lady with curly eyes and laughing hair—are you quite fair to Charlie See?”
“No,” said Lyn contritely, “I’m not. I suppose we ought to tell him.”
“We ought to tell everybody. So far as I am concerned, I would enjoy being a sandwich man placarded in big letters: ‘Property of Miss Lyn Dyer.’”
“Why, Hobbiest—I thought it was rather nice that we had such a great big secret all our own. But you’re right—I see that now. I should have met him at the door, I suppose, and said, ‘You are merely wasting your time, Mr. See. I will never desert my Wilkins!’ Only that might have been a little awkward, in a way, because, you see, ‘Nobody asked you to,’ he said—or might have said.”
“He never told you, then?”
“Not a word.”
“But you knew?”
“Yes,” said Lyn. “I knew.” She twisted a button on his coat and spoke with a little wistful catch in her voice. “I do like him,Hobby—I can’t help it. Only so much.” She indicated how much on the nail of a small finger. “Just a little teeny bit. But that little bit is—”
“Strictly plutonic?”
“Yes,” she said in a small meek voice. “How did you know? He makes me like him, Hobbiest. It—it scares me sometimes.”
“Pretty cool, I’ll say, for a girl that has only been engaged a week, if you should happen to ask me.”
“Oh, but that’s not the same thing—not the same thing at all! You couldn’t keep me from liking you, not if you tried ever so hard. That is all settled. But Charlie makes me like him. You see, he is such a real people; I feel like the Griffin did about the Minor Cañon: ‘He was brave and good and honest, and I think I should have relished him.’”
Hobby held her at arm’s length and regarded her quizzically. “So young, and yet so tender?”
“‘So young, my lord, and true.’”
“Well,” said Hobby resignedly, “I supposewe’ll have to quarrel, of course. They all do. But I don’t know how to go about it. What do I say next?”
“I might as well tell you the worst, angelest pieface. You ought to know what a shocking horrid little creature your brown girl really is. You won’t ever tell—honest-to-goodness, cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die?”
“Never.”
“Say it, then.”
“Honest-to-goodness, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die.”
She buried her face on his breast. “I dreamed about him last night, Hobby. Wasn’t that queer? I hadn’t thought of him before for months—weeks, anyhow.”
“A week, maybe?” suggested Hobby.
“Oh, more than that! Two weeks, at the very least. I—I hate to tell you,” she whispered. “I—I dreamed I liked him almost as much as I do you!”
“Why, you brazen little bigamist!”
“Yes, I am—I mean, ain’t I?” she assented complacently, for his arms belied his words. “But that’s not the worst, Hobbiest—that’s notnearly the dreadfulest. When I woke up I—I wrote some—some verses about my dream. Are you awfully angry? We’ll burn them together after you read them.”
“Woman, produce those verses! I will take charge of them as ‘Exhibit A.’”
“And then you’ll beat me, please?”
“Oh, no,” said Hobby magnanimously. “That’s nothing! Pish, tush! Why, Linoleum, I feel that way about lots of girls. Molly Sullivan, now—”
“Hobby!”
“I always like to dream of Molly. One of the best companions to take along in a dream—”
“Only-est! Please don’t!”
“Well, then,” said Hobby, “I won’t—on one condition. It is to be distinctly understood under no circumstances are you ever to call me Charlie. I won’t stand for it. Dig up your accursed doggerel!”
This is what Hobby Lull read aloud, with exaggerated fervor, while Lyn huddled by the dying fire and hid her burning face in her hands:
Last night I kissed you as you slept,For all night long I dreamed of you;Lower and low the hearth fire crept,The embers glowed and dimmed; we twoHeard the wind rave at bolt and doorWith all the world shut out and fast,Doubted, hoped, questioned, feared no more,And all we sought was ours at last.I do not love you, dear. I never loved you,Grudged what I gave, a wayward tenderness;Yet in my dream I wooed you with white armsAnd lingering soft caress.Now for all years to come I must remember,When fires burn dim and low,This false dear dream of mine, that stolen hour—Your face of long ago.I shall awaken in some midnight lonely,I shall remember you as one apart,How for one hour of dream I loved you onlyAnd held you in my heart.And you, through all the years since first you met meStill let my memory gleam;Oh, my old lover! Do not quite forget me!I loved you—in my dream!
Last night I kissed you as you slept,For all night long I dreamed of you;Lower and low the hearth fire crept,The embers glowed and dimmed; we twoHeard the wind rave at bolt and doorWith all the world shut out and fast,Doubted, hoped, questioned, feared no more,And all we sought was ours at last.I do not love you, dear. I never loved you,Grudged what I gave, a wayward tenderness;Yet in my dream I wooed you with white armsAnd lingering soft caress.Now for all years to come I must remember,When fires burn dim and low,This false dear dream of mine, that stolen hour—Your face of long ago.I shall awaken in some midnight lonely,I shall remember you as one apart,How for one hour of dream I loved you onlyAnd held you in my heart.And you, through all the years since first you met meStill let my memory gleam;Oh, my old lover! Do not quite forget me!I loved you—in my dream!
Hobby cleared his throat impressively,tapped his table with the paper, and assumed measured judicial accents.
“This incriminating document proves—hah—hum—”
“To the satisfaction of the court,” prompted Lyn in a muffled voice.
“To the satisfaction of the court—I thank you! To the very great satisfaction of the court, this document, together with the barefaced manner in which you have brought this evidence to the cognizance of this court—it proves, little Lady Lyn, that you are compact all of loyalty and clean honor—and the sentence of this court is, Imprisonment for life!”
He held out his arms, and the culprit crept gladly to prison.
“Then there was a star danc’d, and under that was I born.”—Much Ado About Nothing.
“Then there was a star danc’d, and under that was I born.”
—Much Ado About Nothing.
Cole Ralston rose up in a red windy dawn; he cupped his hands to his mouth and called out lustily: “Beds!”
All around, men roused up in the half darkness and took up the word, laughing, as they dressed: “Beds! Beds!”
The call meant that the wagon was to be moved to-day; that each man was to roll bedding and tarp to a hard and tight-roped cylinder, and was then to carry it to a stack by the bed wagon.
The cook bent over pots and pans, an active demon by a wind-blown fire; here already the bobtail ate their private breakfast, that they might depart in haste to relieve the last guard—now slowly moving the herd from the bed ground, half a mile away.
Cole moved over where Johnny Dines was making up his bed roll.
“Needn’t hurry with that bed, Johnny,” hesaid in an undertone. “You move the wagon to Preisser Lake this mornin’. Besides, you may want to hold something out of your bed. You’re to slip away after dinner and edge over towards Hillsboro. Help Hiram bring his cattle back when he gets ready. Tell him we’ll be round Aleman all this week, so he might better come back through MacCleod’s Pass. I don’t know within fifty mile where the John Cross wagon is.”
Johnny nodded, abandoning his bed making. “Bueno, señor!” He took a pair of leather chaparejos from the bed, regarded them doubtfully and threw them back.
“Guess I won’t take the chaps. Don’t need them much except on the river work, in the mesquite; and they’re so cussed, all-fired hot.”
“Say, John, you won’t need your mount, I reckon. Just take one horse. Lot of our runaway horses in the John Cross pasture. You can ride them—and take your pick for your mount when you come back. That’s all. Road from Upham goes straight west through the mountains. Once you pass the summit you see your own country.”
“Got you,” said Johnny.
He went hotfoot to the wagon, grabbed a tin washbasin, held it under the water-barrel faucet and made a spluttering toilet—first man, since he had not rolled his bed.
The bobtail rode off at a laughing gallop. Daylight grew. The horse herd drew near with a soft drumming of trotting feet in the sand. Johnny rustled tools from the stacked tin plates and cups; he stabbed a mighty beefsteak with his iron fork; he added hot sour-dough biscuit, a big spoonful of hot canned corn; he poured himself a cup of hot black coffee, sat down on one of his own feet in the sand, and became a busy man.
Others joined that business. The last guard came in; the chattering circle round the fire grew with surprising swiftness. Each, as he finished, carried cup, plate and iron cutlery to the huge dishpan by the chuck box, turned his night horse loose, and strode off to the horse herd, making a noose in his rope. They made a circle round the big horse herd, a rope from each to each by way of a corral on three sides of it; night wrangler and daywrangler, mounted, holding down the fourth side. Grumbling dayherders caught their horses, saddled with miraculous swiftness and departed to take over the herd. The bobtail was back before the roping out of horses was completed. While the bobtail roped out their horses, Johnny and the two wranglers lured out the four big brown mules for the chuck wagon and the two small brown mules for the bed wagon, tied them to convenient soapweeds and hung a nose bag full of corn on each willing brown head. Last of all the horse wrangler caught his horse. The night wrangler was to ride the bed wagon, so he needed no horse.
The circle of men melted away from about the horse herd; there was a swift saddling, with occasional tumult of a bucking rebel; the horse herd grazed quietly away; the wranglers went to breakfast; even as they squatted cross-legged by the fire the last horse was saddled, the Bar Cross outfit was off to eastward to begin the day’s drive, half a dozen horses pitching enthusiastically, cheered by ironical encouragement and advice bestowed on theirriders. The sun would not be up for half an hour yet. Forty men had dressed, rolled their beds, eaten, roped out their day’s horses in the half light from a dodging mob of four hundred head, saddled and started. Fifty minutes had passed since the first call of beds. The day herd was a mile away, grazing down the long road to Preisser Lake; at the chuck box the cook made a prodigious clatter of dish washing.
The Bar Cross had shipped the north drive of steers from Engle; the wagon had then wandered southward for sixty miles to Fort Selden, there to begin the south work in a series of long zigzags across the broad plain. This was the morrow after that day on which Charlie See had ridden to Garfield.
The wagon was halfway home to Engle now; camped on the central run-off of the desert drainage system, at the northmost of the chain of shallow wet-weather lakes—known as Red Lakes—lying east and south from Point of Rocks Hills. Elsewhere these had been considerable hills; ten or fifteen milessquare of steepish sugar loaves, semi-independent, with wide straits of grassy plain winding between; but here, dumped down in the center of the plain, they seemed pathetically insignificant and paltry against the background of mighty hill, Timber Mountain black in the west, San Andreas gleaming monstrous against the rising sun.
Theoretically, the Jornada was fifty miles wide here; in reality it was much wider; in seeming it was twice as wide. From Red Lakes as a center you looked up an interminable dazzle of slope to the San Andreas, up and up over a broken bench country to Timber Mountain, the black base of it high above the level of Point o’ Rocks at its highest summit; and toward the north looked up and up and up again along a smoother and gentler slope ending in a blank nothingness, against which the eye strained vainly.
Johnny sipped another cup of coffee with the wranglers; he smoked a cigarette; he put on fresh clothing from his bed; he took his gun from his bed and buckled the belt looselyat his waist. His toilet completed, he rolled his bed. By this time the wranglers had breakfasted.
They piled the bed rolls high on the bed wagon and roped them tight for safe riding; they harnessed and hitched the two small mules. The night wrangler tied the reins to the dashboard and climbed to the top of the stacked bedding.
“You see that these mules get started, will you, Pat? I’m going to sleep. They’ll tag along after the chuck wagon if you’ll start ’em once,” said the night wrangler. Discipline did not allow the night wrangler a name. He stretched out luxuriously, his broad hat over his face.
Johnny and Pat—Pat was the horse wrangler—hitched the four mules to the chuck wagon, after which Pat rounded up his scattered charges and drove them down to the lake for water.
All this time the red-head cook had been stowing away his housekeeping, exactly three times as fast as you would expect three men to do it. A good cook, a clean cook, swiftest ofall cooks, Enriquez—also despot and holy terror as a side line. Henry was the human hangnail. It is a curious thing that all round-up cooks are cranks; a fact which favors reflection. If it be found that cooking and ferocity stand in the relation of cause to effect, a new light is thrown on an old question.
The last Dutch oven was stowed away, the lid of the chuck box snapped shut and locked. Johnny tossed the few remaining beds up to the cook.
“Do we fill the barrel here, Henry?”
“No. Dees water muddy. Preisser Lake she am deep and clean. De company ees buil’ a dam dere, yes. Han’ me dees lines. You Mag! Jake! Rattle yo’ hocks!”
With creaking of harness and groaning of axle, the chuck wagon led off on a grass-grown road winding away to the northwest, a faint track used only by the round-up; travel kept to the old Santa Fé trail, to the west, beyond the railroad. Johnny started the other team. Unguided, the bed wagon jounced and bumped over grassy hummocks until it reached the old road and turnedin contentedly at the tail of the chuck wagon. The sleeping wrangler mumbled, rolled precariously on his high lurching bed, and settled back to sleep.
Johnny laughed and rode ahead to help Pat. They drove the horses in a wide detour round the slow-grazing day herd. But the chuck wagon held the right of way over everything; when it came to pass the herd an hour or two later, it would be for the herd to swerve aside.
The sun was high and hot now; Preisser Hill, a thin long shadow, rose dim above the plain; Upham tower and tank loomed high and spectral, ahead and at the left.
“How do I get from Upham to the river, Pat? I’m new to this country.”
“Wagon road due west to MacCleod’s Pass.”
“Can’t see any pass from here.”
“Naw. You slip into fold between the hills, and twist round like a figure three. Then you come to a big open park and MacCleod’s Tank. Three draws run down from the park to the river. ’Pache cañon, the biggest, runs north to nowhere; Redgate, on the left, twistsround to Garfield. Wagon road goes down Redgate. And Deadman Draw, in between, bears due west and heap down, short and sweet. Riding?”
“Yep. Hillsboro. The middle draw will be the one for me, then.”
By ten o’clock they watered the horse herd at Preisser Lake; the wagons toiled far behind. Half a mile away they picked the camp site, with a little ridge for wind-break, soapweeds to tie night horses to, wood handy, and a nearby valley to be a bed ground for the herd; a valley wide, open, free from brush, gully or dog holes.
They dragged up a great pile of mesquite roots and built a fire; Pat went to watch his horses and Johnny returned to the lake. Henry drove the wagon into the lake, hub deep; Johnny stood on the hub and dipped buckets of water, which he handed up for the cook to pour into the barrel.
While these two filled the barrel the grumbling night wrangler drove on to the fire; when the slow chuck wagon trundled up, the night-hawk had unharnessed his span of mules,spread his roll in the cool shade under the bed wagon, and was already asleep. The cook tossed down the odd beds, handed down to Johnny certain pots, pans, ovens; he jumped down—slap, snap, clatter, flash!—the ovens were on the fire, the chuck box open, flour in the bread pan; Henry was at his profession, mixing bread on the table made by the open lid of the chuck box, upheld by a hinged leg which fell into place as the lid tilted down.
Johnny unharnessed; he unrolled a tarp which wrapped a quarter of beef, and hung the beef on the big brake; he filled the ten-gallon coffee kettle and took it to the fire.
“Henry,” he said cautiously, “can you let me have some cold bread and meat—enough for night and morning? I’m for Hillsboro. Goin’ to make a dry camp beyond the river somewhere. Hillsboro’s too far and Garfield not far enough. So I don’t want to stay at the settlements to-night. I’ll lay out and stake my horse, I reckon. Got to find the John Cross wagon to-morrow, and it’ll take me all my time—so I don’t want to wait for dinner.”
“Humph!” With a single motion Henry flirted a shovelful of glowing coals from the fire; a second motion twisted a small meat oven into place over those coals. A big spoonful of lard followed. “Rustle a can and boil you some coffee. Open can tomatoes; pour ’em in a plate. Use can. Ground coffee in box—top shelf. I’ll have bread done for you when coffee boils!”
While he spoke his hands were busy. He dragged from the chuck box a dishpan full of steaks, cut the night before. With a brisk slap he spread a mighty steak on the chuck box lid, sprinkled it with salt, swept it through the flour in his bread pan with precisely the wrist-twisting motion of a man stropping a razor, and spread the steak in the hissing lard.
“Cook you another bimeby for night,” he grunted, and emptied his sour-dough sponge into the bread pan. A snappy cook, Henry; on occasion he had built dinner for thirty men in thirty minutes, by the watch, from the time the wagon stopped—bread, coffee, steak and fried potatoes—steak and potatoes made ready for cooking the night before, of course.Henry had not known he was being timed, either; he was that kind of a cook.
Johnny gave thanks and ate; he rolled a substantial lunch in a clean flour sack and tied it in his slicker behind the saddle. He rode to the horse herd; Pat rounded up the horses and Johnny snared his Twilight horse for the trip. Twilight was agrullo; that is to say, he was precisely the color of a Maltese cat—a sleek velvet slaty-blue; a graceful, half-wild creature, dainty muzzled, clean legged as a deer. Pat held Twilight by bit and bridle and made soothing statements to him while Johnny saddled. Johnny slid into the saddle, there was a brief hair-stirring session of bucking; then Twilight sneezed cheerfully and set off on a businesslike trot. Johnny waved good-by, and turned across the gray plain toward Upham. Looking back, he saw the van of the day herd just showing up, a blur in the southeast.
Six miles brought him to Upham—side track, section house, low station, windmill tower and tank; there was a deep well here. He crossed the old white scar of the Santa Fétrail, broad, deep worn, little used and half forgotten. A new and narrow road turned here at right angles to the old trail and led ruler-straight to the west. Johnny followed this climbing road, riding softly; bands of cattle stirred uneasily and made off to left or right in frantic run or shuffling trot. The road curved once only, close to the hills, to round the head of a rock-walled, deep, narrow gash, square and straight and sheer, reaching away toward Rincon, paralleling the course of the mountains. No soft water-washed curves marked that grim gash; here the earth crust had cracked and fallen apart; for twenty miles that gray crack made an impassable barrier; between here and the bare low hills was a No Man’s Land.
Midway of the twisting pass Johnny came to a gate in a drift fence strung from bluff to bluff; here was a frontier of the Bar Cross country. He passed the outpost hills and came out to a rolling open park, a big square corral of cedar pickets, an earthen dam, a deep five-acre tank of water. About this tank two or three hundred head of cattle baskedcomfortably in the warm sun, most of them lying down. They were gentle cattle; Johnny rode slowly among them without stirring up excitement. “River cattle—nester cattle,” said Johnny. There were many brands, few of which he had seen before, though he had heard of most of them.
A fresh bunch of cattle topped a riverward ridge; the leaders raised their heads, snorted, turned and fled; Twilight leaped in pursuit. “River cattle—bosquecattle—outlaws!” said Johnny. From the tail of his eye, as Twilight thundered across the valley, Johnny was aware of a deep gashed cañon heading in the north, of a notch in the western rim of the saucer-shaped basin, and a dark pass at the left. The cattle turned to the left. Johnny closed in on them, taking down his rope from the saddle horn. Twenty head—among them one Bar Cross cow with an unbranded calf some eight or ten months old. Johnny’s noose whirled open, he drove the spurs home and plunged into a whistling wind. He drew close, he made his cast and missed it; Twilight swerved aside at the very instant of the throw,the rope dragged at his legs, he fell to frantic pitching. Johnny gathered up the rope, massaged his refractory mount with it, brought him to reason; in time to see a dust cloud of cattle drop into the leftward pass. Twilight flashed after. As they dived into the pass they came to the wagon road again.
“This is Redgate,” thought Johnny.
They careened down the steep curves, the cattle were just ahead; Twilight swooped upon them, scattered the tailenders, drove ahead for the Bar Cross cow and her long-ear. A low saddleback pass appeared at the right, a winding trail led up to an overhanging promontory under the pass; below, the wagon road made a deep cut by the base of the hill. Distrusting the cut road as the work of man, the leaders took to the trail. Twilight was at their heels; at the crown of the little promontory Johnny threw again, and his rope circled the long-ear’s neck. Johnny flipped the slack, the yearling crossed it and fell crashing; Johnny leaped off and ran down the rope, loosing the hogging string at his waist as he ran; he gathered the yearling’s struggling feet andhog-tied them. Twilight looked on, panting but complacent.
“Look proud, now do, you ridiculous old fool!” said Johnny. “Ain’t you never goin’ to learn no sense a-tall? You old skeezicks! You’ve lost a shoe, too.”
He coiled his rope and tied it to the saddle horn; from under the horn on the other side he took a running iron, held there by a slitted leather—an iron rod three-eighths of an inch in diameter, a foot long and shaped like a shepherd’s crook. He gathered up dead branches of mahogany bush and made a small fire, cunningly built for a quick draft, close beside the yearling; he thrust the hook part of the branding iron into the hottest fire; and while it was heating he returned to give grave reprimand and instruction to Twilight. That culprit listened attentively, bright-eyed and watchful; managing in some way to bear himself so as to suggest a man who looks over the top of his spectacles while rubbing his chin with a thoughtful thumb. When the iron was hot Johnny proceeded to put the Bar Cross brand on the protesting yearling. Lookingup, he became aware of a man riding soberly down the cañon toward him. Johnny waved his hand and shoved his iron into the fire for a second heating.
The newcomer rode up the trail and halted; a big red-headed man with a big square face and twinkling eyes. He fished for tobacco and rolled a cigarette.
“Thought I knew all the Bar Cross waddies. You haven’t been wearin’ the crop and split very long, have you?”
“They just heard of me lately,” explained Johnny.
“I know that Twilight horse of yours. Saw him last spring at the round-up. Purty as a picture, ain’t he?”
“Humph! Pretty is as pretty does.” Johnny returned to his branding. “He made me miss my throw, and now I’m in the wrong cañon. I aimed to take the draw north of here, for Hillsboro.”
The newcomer leaned on his saddle horn.
“Deadman? Well, you could cross over through this pass if you was right set on it. But it’s a mean place on the far side—slick,smooth rock. You might as well go on by way of Garfield now. You won’t lose but a mile or two, and you’ll have fine company—me. Or—say, if you’re going that way, why can’t you mail a letter for me? Then I won’t have to go at all. I’d be much obliged to you if you would. That was all I was going for, to mail some location notices.”
“Sure I will. I kind of want to see Garfield anyhow. Never been there. Crop and split the right. So that’s done. I’ll keep this piece of ear for tally.”
The other took a large envelope from his saddle pockets and handed it over. Dines stuck it in the bosom of his flannel shirt.
“I ain’t got no stamps. This letter’ll need two, I guess. Here’s the nickel. Will you please kindly stick ’em on for me?”
“Sure,” said Dines again. He undid the yearling’s legs. “Now, young fellow, go find your mammy. Go a-snuffin’!”
The yearling scrambled to his feet, bellowing. Johnny jerked him round by the tail so that his nose pointed down the cañon; the newcomer jumped his horse and shook a stirrupand slapped his thigh with his hat; the yearling departed.
“Well, I’ll be getting on back to camp,” said the newcomer. “So long! Much obliged to you.”
“So long!” said Johnny.
He waved his hand. The other waved answer as he took the trail. He jogged in leisurely fashion up the cañon. Dines paused to tread out the remaining fire, took up his branding iron by the cool end, and rode whistling down the cañon, swinging the iron to cool it before he slipped it to its appointed place below his saddle horn.